"Indie Game: The Movie," which premieres at the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax on June 6, looks at independent video game designers and their insane labors of love. Pictured: Super Meat Boy co-designer Tommy Refenes works into the wee hours of the night in his bedroom.

The tortured souls who drive the action in “Indie Game: The Movie” lack many of the requisite “reality” traits, including drug habits, violent or salacious pasts, mainstream fame and a laundry list of accomplishments.

But they’re compelling nonetheless, as passionate and funny and self-obsessed as any documentary could hope to find — especially when tackling the niche subject of independent video games.

First-time Canadian filmmaking team Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky briskly chart the birth of this new genre, which has risen over the past decade amid digital distribution platforms such as Valve’s Steam and the PlayStation Network.

Like punk rock or alternative comedy, it’s a DIY pursuit that pits go-it-alone types against an industry machine, often breeding exciting but intensely idiosyncratic art in the process.

As we know, the multibillion-dollar video-game industry usually gives a staff of hundreds a $100 million-plus budget to crank out titles like Mass Effect 3 and the Grand Theft Auto series. But indie games are the work of one or two designers laboring for years on shoestring budgets to create something more akin to an interactive self-portrait than a blockbuster shoot-’em-up.

And they can make money, too. Whether it’s a world-building game like Minecraft or a beautifully simple tale like Journey, indie games don’t need corporate budgets to sell tens of thousands of copies and rake in millions of dollars.

Phil Fish, the Canadian designer of Fez, is part of a generation that is designing games that reflect the difficulty of those they played in their youth, such as Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and Tetris.

From “Indie Game’s” first immaculately composed frame we meet Tommy Refenes and Edmund McMillen, two buddies and programmers laboring over Super Meat Boy, a quirky platforming game. We meet San Francisco’s Jonathan Blow, designer of the critically acclaimed 2008 title Braid, which turned many onto the concept of indie games. And we meet Phil Fish, a Montreal-based designer struggling to finish the game Fez under the crushing weight of industry and fan expectations.

All share varying degrees of experience in the industry and a compulsion to sketch their vulnerable inner world via their games. We’re given some context from Wired writer Gus Matrapa, Kill Screen editor Chris Dahlen and others, but the majority of the film’s run time is devoted to this quartet of designers.

The subjects aren’t exactly diverse: All are middle-class white males in their 20s and 30s, the sort of nerdy-yet-cool guys who listen to the Melvins and watch Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming block.

And as we flit from Santa Cruz, Calif., to Montreal to Asheville, N.C., to Boston, the documentary occasionally struggles to establish a firm chronology. But it never loses sight of the narrative thrust, which involves the bleary-eyed dash to complete these games before some form of public unveiling.

A few scenes offer sublimely absurd melodrama, as when Refenes describes his deadline anxiety — hand practically on his forehead — by saying, “I cry at the idea of crying about it, because that’s weird.” But Pajot and Swirsky dole out these moments judiciously, never reducing their stars to caricature.

The documentary’s own origin story mimics the resourcefulness of its subjects in gathering funds from kickstarter.com and a robust online community. The freedom allows them to shine a warm but pixelated light on a familiar character — the struggling artist — without beating viewers over the head with justifications of video games’ artistic relevance and commercial clout.

“How cool would it that be to make a game that could put other people inside my mind when I was like 5, 6, 7?” McMillen asks at one point. With a tasteful but loose approach to a fascinating new field, “Indie Game: The Movie” skillfully manages to do the same.

“INDIE GAME: THE MOVIE.” 7 p.m. Wednesday film screening, Q&A with Colorado Indie Game Developers Association, afterparty with live DJ, giveaways and game demos. $9.75. 303-595-3456 or denverfilm.org.

A&E reporter John Wenzel has covered a variety of topics for The Denver Post over the years, including video games, comedy, music and the fine arts. He's been playing and loving video games since his dad brought home a sweet ColecoVision in 1983. Catch him on PSN as beardsandgum.

Hugh got his start writing for the Cheyenne and Woodmen Edition newspapers in Colorado Springs. In 2011 he moved to Denver where he has written for Denver Urban Spectrum and Colorado Community Media’s Wheat Ridge Transcript. Hugh joined The Denver Post in 2014 as an editorial assistant.